The diagnosis was simple. The little one Angelito, who had barely turned two years oldI had inflammation in my stomach. The doctor at a health center in ApatzinganMichoacán, had prescribed them a medicine and indications for it to be relieved soon, it was a fairly common inflammation. A few days later, however, the baby was not improving, he was still unwell, some screams and writhing showed that it was a serious matter.
On February 2, 2018, desperate, the mother called her father-in-law and told him that your baby had very strange behaviors. Those screams surprised her and, despite the few words that the little boy barely babbled, for her, he had delusions that were abnormal. His father-in-law then planted a suspicion in him: perhaps it was something from the devil.
Angelito’s mother took him to a neighborhood priest and told him the whole situation. Although the doctor had told them that it was nothing extraordinary, she still believed that perhaps it was the devil. The priest, to leave her calmer, would say a little prayer to her. at mass All parishioners would pray for the little one’s health. But it wasn’t enough. “I don’t know how to explain it, but the child continued to get worse (…), he had hallucinations, delusions,” the mother would declare before the authority, a few days later.
Family members recommended someone who could help her. His name was Gilberto Hernández Jiménez, a healer from Apatzingán who had become famous among the people and pious souls of the colony. Also, to add to the plot, he was a distant relative of her husband. On February 9, at 11:00 in the morning, Gilberto arrived at the house. The mother led him to the room where the child was with stomach cramps. The witcher’s diagnosis was imminent: a “demonized thing” had become embedded in his stomach.
You just had to give him a rub on the stomach, he said, for the demon to leave Angelito’s tummy. But things got complicated. According to Gilberto, the demon resisted and had to hit and break the child’s vertebrae. A few hours later, Angelito died after an exorcist ritual.
The exorcisms are old practices that persist and generate controversy. In the country, only the Primate Archdiocese of Mexico has priests specialized in this practice and ecclesiastical permits are required.
Documents obtained from the Judicial Branch of the Federation and the multiple protections that Gilberto has processed since 2021, reveal secrets of an exorcism that ended in murder and has reached the courts of Mexico.
From the room he saw that he had tied him
Since 2021, Gilberto Hernández Jiménez has filed various judicial appeals before the Collegiate Criminal Court of Morelia, to try to discredit the statements of Angelito’s mother and invalidate a sentence of 25 years in prison for qualified murder. It is extremely strange to read, page by page of the file, how those involved really believed that Angelito was possessed, which led to his death. They said that yes, he was possessed, that yes, the devil took over his spirit.
But the most shocking thing about this case is the story of the day he died. At 11:18 a.m., the file says, Gilberto entered the room. The last image that the mother has is Little angel lying down, covered with a white blanketthe last memory of her living child.
The exorcist told her to leave the room and she obeyed by opening the door. “I wanted to give him the opportunity to help him, because only I was going to give him a rub in the stomach, in order to get out what the child had inside, a demon thing that was attacking him in the stomach,” said the mother.
But then she began to hear noises that she “didn’t feel were good,” moans and cries. The woman ran into the room and saw that her child was tied by the feet, “his entire little body was already tied with white bandages.” Gilberto, seeing her surprised, told her that it was necessary to squeeze his body to get the demon out of him.
his mother He saw from the door that he was “swirling” her hair to the child, “so that the demon could come out,” said the exorcist. “He grabbed him and was twisting his little head strongly, he had him held and at the same time with only one hand, and with the other he was stopping him, he was holding him by the forearm.”
After a few minutes, her mother finally reacted and He yelled the child out of his hands and pushed him, He told him that he was not well. He only told her that she was a weak spirit. The woman with all her strength pushed the charlatan out of the room.
The C5 received the call for help from Lázaro Cárdenas
When he managed to take the child from her, he saw that he was very bad: he began to vomit, there was blood and he no longer reacted. His skin was changing color. Soon her husband arrived, he saw how Gilberto was standing next to his wife, who heartbroken she tried to revive Angelito and untied him from the accumulation of bandages that had bound him. The father began to touch him and give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive him. They finally called Civil Protection when they realized that the child was breathing slowly.
“When I arrived, I almost had no pulse, I was almost not breathing (…) his heart practically no longer beat. They told me that I had a demon inside,” his father declared before a court in Apatzingán a few days later. The mother says that the exorcism lasted only 20 minutes and that Gilberto maintained the version until the end that his child had to be cured of a demonic presence that stalked him.
That February 9, C5 of the Lázaro Cárdenas region, at 1:18 p.m., received the call: a minor with respiratory problems was dying in a house in Apatzingán. About 15 minutes later, the ambulance arrived at the house and They realized immediately that the child was dead..
A report reveals that a police officer from the area interviewed the mother and came to a conclusion: “the ‘modus operandi’ He is a minor who died after being cured by an exorcism”. It also reads: “Within the investigations he carried out, it was established that it was due to the injuries he suffered, because he was exorcised by his uncle-in-law.”
The charlatan continues to file legal appeals
A forensic doctor from the State Attorney General’s Office determines that during the exorcism Angelito suffered an ecchymosis under his right eyean injury in the malar region of the left side, known as the cheek or cheek, and another injury in what was the abdomen, infraumbilical region, circular injuries in the wrist of the hands, and injuries circular in the feet and the fatal injury: in the cervical.
“Any injury that has a section in the spinal cord at the cervical level is fatal in itself by damaging a vital organ; that the dislocation could have been generated by a blowand even a movement caused by someone else, in this case towards the minor, that movement could be that of being grabbed by the neck, which is the chin.”
Gilberto Hernández was sentenced to spend 25 years in prison on September 25, 2019 for the crime of aggravated homicide, to the detriment of Angelito and since then he has to pay 449 thousand pesos to the family. However, since 2021, he has not stopped filing appeals to prove that he only wanted to get the demon out of him.
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